This invention relates to a microcomputer and method for selecting foodstuffs and maintaining a record of the nutritional values of foodstuffs eaten.
Many persons must select foods to eat based upon dietary restrictions imposed by desired weight control or by physician's prescriptions for maintaining health. Many aids have been proposed for persons engaged in such selection and recording of foodstuffs eaten, including at least some computerized record keeping schemes as shown, for example, in Ratcliff U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,244,020; Krames 4,321,674; Segar 4,380,802; Ratcliff 4,575,804; and Blum 4,686,624.
Such devices and methods as known prior to the present invention suffer from a number of difficulties and deficiencies. Most notable are limitation on the number of specific foodstuffs which can be considered, the types of nutritional values which can be noted and recorded, and the correlation of the nutritional values with known branded products. For example only, while a person on a restricted diet may well consider eating a McDonald's hamburger (and such may be entirely permissible within the scope of any self imposed or prescribed diet), there is no reasonable way provided by the prior devices and methods to evaluate with any accuracy the effect on an overall dietary plan of such a branded product. Indeed, many prior devices and methods start from the assumption that the user already knows the nutritional values of such foodstuffs or can at the least closely approximate them. Such devices and methods are of limited usefulness to a person who finds themselves frequently in commercial establishment where foodstuff make-up and quantities are controlled by the food provider and not by the consumer.